


once there were dragons

by nvx



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, References to Norse Religion & Lore, lots of character mentions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:33:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28074753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nvx/pseuds/nvx
Summary: It hits Zelda all at once, the beginning of time, the eyes, the demon, her demon, the demon.“You’re her.” It’s a question and a statement and the woman narrows her eyes, grinning with far too many teeth and far too little warmth.“I’m her.”Lilith.
Relationships: Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	once there were dragons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galentines](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galentines/gifts).



> this got so revamped wow  
> anyways this is for caity who loved pirate 69 and the original Iceland/Norse AU (somehow with light greek mythology because my brain is a mess) so now it's just a mess that focuses on the ocean because I enjoy the ocean and also Lilith as the ocean just makes sense somehow

In another life, Zelda Spellman would have saved people. 

In this life, she nearly did. 

\- 

There’s a creature under her bed with sharp white teeth and blood red lips. There’s a shadow behind the door with ice blue eyes whispering _you’re chosen Zelda Spellman_. There’s a mark on the back of her eyelids that she cannot escape. There’s a demon following her, and Zelda just wants to know the demons' name. 

She was baptised in October, underneath a blood moon with red staining her hands (if it was Zelda’s decision she would have rather been baptised underneath a new moon with stars in her hair and the ground far below her, the salt and sea in her veins). The event was feral, ancient, _sacred_ and Zelda felt _powerful_. 

She travelled to England the next day – away from Faustus, away from Edward and Hilda, away from _family_. 

\- 

There’s an elf who works at a corner café with silver hair and violet eyes who fixes Zelda’s espresso with a smirk and magic twirling between her fingers. She’s cute, and hides pain behind a smile and Zelda _relishes_ the way she screams her name at night. 

There’s a warlock with jet black hair and dark brown eyes who whispers sweet nothings in Greek and Arabic and languages so dead, they too have turned to dust. The elf was a better lover but he gets the job done. 

She sends telegrams to Hilda and Edward, hears about how _Faustus_ is rising up through the academy, how he is a totem of power and leadership. 

_He’s not as good as you_ Edward writes. _He’s not as good as you and he never will be and he knows it_. 

Zelda isn’t sure why that makes her feel better, but it does. 

It’s 1367 and Zelda Spellman is still so, _so_ young and yearns to travel the world. 

\- 

There’s a woman on the other side of the room who is watching her with one eyebrow raised and a glass of wine in one hand. There’s the smell of sweat and sex in the air and Zelda is pinned to the wall by eyes so blue she feels like she’s drowning. A waiter passes by and refills her glass. The eyes don’t leave her and the need for a smoke is making Zelda want to strip out of her skin and launch herself from the balcony. 

She excuses herself from the conversation and weaves her way through the crowd, feeling ice drip down her spine as eyes raked over her body. 

Outside, the world is crisp and cold and _free_ on the brink of war. Zelda lights some tobacco and takes a deep drag, relishing the feel of nicotine through her veins. Faries dance across the sky, lighting up the Paris skyline as bright as any star. Their numbers were dwindling, slowly with the spread of mortals, but dwindling none the less. 

(she wonders if there will be a day when the last witch will die, the opposite of Lilith, the last witch, the last woman on earth, lying for her final rest) 

Everything happens to her in this winter that should not be. There’s a scream in the distance, otherworldly, and it scatters the fairies and swallows up the sky. 

“A jötunn dying,” the voice sounds like smoke and sin and sex. Zelda knows it’s the woman from across the room. “They’ve been dying too often from mortal hands. Fear drives them to be reckless.” 

She hums in response. There’s no need to engage. 

(Satan above, Zelda wants her to engage with that voice) 

“Where are you from?” Zelda asks. “Who are you?” 

The woman laughs and the only thing Zelda knows is that her eyes are the same colour as her shadows – bright and blue and unnerving. She’s ancient, power flows off of her as waves flow off a beach. “I’m from the beginning of time, just like you. Kemur allt með kalda vatninu, Zelda Spellman.” 

Zelda blinks and the woman vanishes. 

Later, she learns that Icelandic was old, older than Latin, and Zelda spends most of the 16th century pouring over dusty texts, devouring the language. She still remembers the woman in Paris who murmured _kemur allt með kalda vatninu_ and vanished in thin air. The woman with eyes like her demon and a voice the timbre of sin. The books drown her in stories of trolls and dwarves and goblins but there’s no mention of the saying, uttered so carelessly to the night. She dreams of red lips and blue eyes and sharp teeth sinking into her neck, making her melt and writhe and moan. She dreams of a hand on her chin and a voice whispering _you rise with the moon, my love, but I rise with the sun._

\- 

She finds graves for the fey everywhere now, an unearthly flower around the horns of a jötunn, an intricately carved scale wrapped around an arrow, the head of a troll, rotted beyond description, half-buried by the river. 

She marches on. 

Legend tells of a witch who can summon any demon, any monster, any shadow in the deepest part of the north. She says her spells in different tongues now, harsher, words forming cold shapes of the north on her lips. 

Zelda longs for winter. 

She finds fey, she guides fey, she buries them. 

_I am seeking the völva_ she says, _can you guide me_? 

They shake their heads, _we cannot,_ pointing north to where the mountains meet the sea and lights dance across the sky, _but you will find her at the edge of the world, witchling_. 

If Zelda was human, she would be 200 years old, but Zelda is not human and the restraints of mortality do not apply to her. 

\- 

She finds the völva. 

The völva tells her stories of sirens, of the hands of gods reaching down to stir the waters, of blinding white lights on the horizon. She says there are strange beasts the length of an island who swallow ships whole. She teaches her in ways of healing and magic that Zelda never knew existed from the Academy. 

_But what of my demon_ , Zelda asks, _What of them? Who are they?_

The völva does not answer. _Go to the sea,_ she says. _Go to the sea for it cures all ails. Go to the sea for you will find the answer in salt water_.

Zelda Spellman learns the world is cruel, no matter her reputation. She learns that loneliness is not a self-inflicted fate, but a chosen one. She learns that all love is nothing but a well-shrouded lie. She takes lovers, reduces herself to nothing more than another in a room of sweat clad bodies in various stages of pain, of pleasure. There’s a mark on the back of her eyelids that she can’t define and questions she can’t answer. 

Then there’s a plane crash, a phone call, a funeral, and Zelda’s packing her bags in Svalbard to catch the next flight back to New York. 

She never buried her parents, Hilda did. Zelda returns to bury Edward next to Diana, empty coffins lowered into empty graves. Ambrose stands next to her, tall and grave and far too young to be witness. Sabrina is in Hilda’s arms, tiny and curled up as she watches wooden boxes get slowly covered by dirt. 

They all return to dust in the end, anyways. 

\- 

“Where have you been?” 

Zelda sighs and lights a cigarette, taking a deep drag. “You’re going to need to be more specific.” 

Hilda glares at her, “All this time, Zelda. Where have you been? No one has seen you since...” _since your baptism_ hangs unspoken between them. 

Zelda avoids thinking about her baptism, about how wrong it felt to have blood on her forehead and a moon in the sky. “Around, Hilda. I’ve been around.” Hilda scoffs and putters around the kitchen. 

“Centuries, Zelda,” she takes a tray of scones out of the oven. “It has been centuries and it took Edward’s funeral to get you back home. What have you been doing, around? 

_Looking for answers_ , Zelda wants to say, _looking for a monster under my bed who haunts me in a language not known to man_. 

She buries herself in an espresso and a Russian newspaper and refuses to answer Hilda’s question. “I’m here now, that’s what matters.” Hilda scoffs at this and turns away, fixing the scones and making preparations for tea. There’s a story about the deathless on the inside cover and words flash through Zelda’s mind again. 

_Kemur allt með kalda vatninu._

“Hilda,” Zelda flicks the newspaper down. “Do you know if father had any books on Scandinavian languages?” 

“Check his study.” 

There’s the smell of dusty books and ancient languages when Zelda opens the door to the study. It reminds her of a library in Germany where she begged the manager to let her stay late, to let her learn, to let her try to discover what _five words_ meant. She runs her fingers over the spines, leather faded and worn and cracked. 

“You won’t find your answers in here.” 

Zelda signs. “You.” 

The woman steps forward. “Me.” 

For the first time since Paris, Zelda sees her, _truly sees her._

_She is stunning_. 

“Who are you?” 

The woman carelessly throws her hair over one shoulder and fixes Zelda with an icy stare. “I already told you, _hetja, valkyrja_. I am from the beginning of time.” 

It hits Zelda all at once, the beginning of time, the eyes, the demon, her demon, _the demon_. 

“You’re her.” It’s a question and a statement and the woman narrows her eyes, grinning with far too many teeth and far too little warmth. 

“I’m her.” 

_Lilith_. 

Zelda sucks in a deep breath. 

“You would pray to me, long ago. Prayers in Hebrew, in Latin, in Greek. But never in Icelandic. You are a wild thing, are you not?” Lilith stalks around her, chasing her prey. “You desire power but lack the strength to find it. You’re from a lineage that dates back to times when vikings sailed the seas and were feared more than the devil. You were baptised in blood beneath a blood moon and it feels _wrong_ to you. You should have been baptised underneath a new moon, with stars in your eyes and a storm in your veins. You rise with the moon, with the stars, you draw your power from shadows and you are too afraid to conquer it. You deserve to be High Priestess, before Blackwood, before your _brother_. So, tell me, Zelda Spellman, what do you crave?” 

“What does it mean?” 

Lilith cocks her head as if considering Zelda’s question. “What does what mean?” 

Zelda doesn't know if she wants to kiss the smirk off of Lilith’s face or hit her with a hammer and bury her in the Cain Pit. 

“Those words, from so long ago.” 

_Kemur allt með kalda vatninu._

Lilith’s grin widens and Zelda is afraid she’s about to be swallowed whole. “Ask me a different question, hetja.” 

There’s an arrogance to the way she holds herself, one that comes with time and pain and suffering. Zelda feels like she should kneel, should bow, should offer herself up as worship in front of this _lonely_ god, this ancient wanderer, this demon without a home. 

“What do you want from me?” 

The smile widens and Zelda knows she’s about to be devoured. 

“ _Devotion_.” 

\- 

Zelda wakes with memories of tongues and teeth and marks covering her body. Wakes to two fingers inside her and a voice dripping down her neck. Wakes to soft skin and silken hair and eyes so blue she’s drowning in them. 

_What do you want from me?_

_Devotion._

“Come for me,” Lilith whispers, crooks her fingers _just so_ , lowering her mouth back to her cunt, and Zelda stifles a scream into the bedsheets before falling, falling, _falling_ into nothingness. 

The next time she wakes she’s alone. 

Lilith is the sea, Zelda realises, she is Rán, capturing sea-farers and luring them under her spell. 

She is not life or death, but rather both. She is cold, harsh, unyielding, unforgiving, and beautiful. She ebbs and flows with the tide, a multitude of voices screaming out all at once and singing in languages that Zelda translates without hearing them before. She is centuries old, seen the rise and fall of empires, toppled kings and queens. She yearns for travel, for a demon she cannot name, for a language she cannot decipher, an ocean she’s tasted, she’s drowned in.

Lilith might be the first woman, the first with, but she’s so much more.

Zelda walks to the ocean, day after day, watching the sun flash red and she wonders if it’s a sign from Lilith, a sign saying that she’s not alone out on the shore.

\- 

The Dark Lord rises. The Dark Lord falls.

There’s blood and bile rising in her throat and Zelda wants to let out the most inhuman scream that she knows to her kind. Lilith picks up the crown and it crumbles to ash in her hands,

She watches as Lilith walks into the ocean the same way she walked into Hell.

(she watches as a crab scuttles across the sand, bone white, following Lilith into the depths as the ocean rises and swallows her whole)

Magic and greatness can both share a face. Zelda learns this in the depths of Hell with Lilith between her legs, all clever tongue and wicked teeth.

\- 

There’s a note on the table one morning, early, before the light rises. 

_Kemur allt með kalda vatninu_ is reads _means it comes with cold water, hetja_. 

The cure for everything is salt water: be it sweat, tears, or the sea.

Zelda learns that on a beach staring over Pandemonium, watching the tides shift.

-

Magic and greatness can both share a face. Zelda learns this in the depths of Hell with Lilith between her legs, all clever tongue and wicked teeth. She stands in the surf, water foaming around her ankles and splashing up her calves as she waits, watching the horizon. A flare of red and the Lilith disappears like lightning, the flash leaving spots behind her eyes. Zelda digs her toes into the wet sand, body poised and aching, as if she could jump into the water and swim after her, but… no.

This is the price they have chosen to pay, and she will do it, even with a heart grown heavy in her hands.

It is with quiet dignity that she stays on the shore, the ocean breeze lifting her hair and the water curling around her like a lover. Charon is waiting for her, willing to take his high priestess back to mortal realms. Back to where she can see if there is anything to salvage of the Coven’s holdings, if there is anything she can mend of the damage done by the Dark Lord. Back to where she will stuff herself into an a too tight dress, trying to pull back and remember how to be a proper lady, a high priestess, instead of a consort and a valkyrja.

Instead of a hetja.

She stands on the shore, watching night reach inky fingers across the sky, chasing the moon. She can hear the cry of ghouls in her ears, the wind a find accompaniment to the sound of waves meeting the shore. The taste of ocean salt on her lips, the briny smell of water at her feet. It’s a song that calls to her soul and she doesn’t want to give it up. Not again. Not without the promise of a lover to soothe her ache above ground.

(not without Lilith)

And as a crab scuttles across the sand, bone white and familiar, she decides.

She’s a high priestess.

She doesn’t have to.

-

Zelda has no stake in the Coven, other than a general wistful fondness. She leaves Prudence and Sabrina to bicker over it like petty children, loudly and at length. Hilda halfway looks like she’d prefer to leave with her, but her loyalty lies with their niece, and that would never be Zelda.

The Coven has no real loyalty to her either and keeping them as the high priestess would only invite future reprisals. She encourages them to return to the Academy and does not protest when Shirley Jackson takes over. This peace offering will hopefully give them enough incentive to answer the call, should the Coven be faced again in her lifetime.

The Spellman Mortuary is a fortress, built from the remains of forests that crashed against cliffs and stretched towards the sky, and it casts a pall over the woods that cannot be denied. Even in the light of day it remains imposing and dark, gently rocking with the wind through the trees.

It serves Zelda’s purposes to stay until she can wander again, using the time as it is to create scripture and attend mass, to building a following in her wake.

(it gives her time to fall into the role of high priestess, to uphold her duties)

She wishes that Edward was here, she would enjoy to have a conversation with him, she would enjoy the chance to get a closer look at his manuscripts, to read his work in its purest form.

She has always treated the Satanic Bible as strict set of rules, but if she wants others to follow her lead, she’ll need to treat them as guidelines. Lilith was different than Lucifer, and if she’d want to follow her god, she’ll need to know about the rules of those that came before her.

And how to twist those rules to her advantage.

She is, after all, ruthless.

-

There is a heartbeat. A pulse and throb that reverberates through her bones.

Zelda wakes, expecting to hear the beat of her own heart in the still of the night, but finds herself listening to something else. A song that sweetly calls her down to where the waves lapped at the shore.

She pulls a robe on, wrapping it tightly around herself, grabs a knife, and leaves her house, magic trembling in her fingers. The shore is empty, lit only by the moon and Zelda watches as it flickers across the waves. She names the stars in her head as she walks across the worn oak steps down until her feet hit the sand; Rigel, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix of Orion, Sirius, Procyon, Castor and Pollux. The wood creaks no matter how light her feet are, the sand shifts beneath her toes and emits the gentlest of squeaks. Her ears strain to hear the song, the sound, a heavy thump, a call that urges her forward and down. She skips the first bank, walking up and toward the horizon. Her eyes are out on the dark water, looking for… something. For anything that seems amiss.

There’s a wet splash of water hitting sand behind her, and she turns on her heel, knife out, magic in hand with a scowl to mask her apprehension.

Lilith stands before her in the dark, the hems of her dress wet and a trail of foam leading out behind her. She smiles, teeth glinting in the moonlight.

“Hetja,” she greets, eyes hooded and dark.

There’s something different about her. Something unsettling about the way the light hits her skin and ripples, as if she were made of water and ice instead of flesh. But, that’s it, isn’t it? She’s no longer confined to Mary Wardwell, free of her fleshy human prison, and though Lilith might assume a human form she is very clearly _not_.

“Lilith,” Zelda returns, her voice as even as she could ever hope for it to be. It has only been a few months since the battle against the Dark Lord. That Lilith had sworn vengeance on Him and Faustus Blackwood, that she swore vengeance against the Coven is not lost to her, but if she is to die here then she will die with a knife in her hand and the stars in her veins. “What are you here for?”

Lilith signs, a heavy breath that fans the smell of ocean rot across her face. “Can’t a woman want to see her high priestess?” She pauses, tilts her head, and glances at Zelda under the fringe of her eyelashes. Zelda would call it coy on another woman, but not on a god. “Faustus, Edward, they were touched by destiny. But you, Zelda, you reached out and took what you wanted. You chose your own fate. You chose freedom.” Her voice lowered and Zelda is reminded of moans and sighs and a wicked tongue tracing glyphs on her thighs. “You chose _me_.”

“I…” Zelda begins, startled at this line of conversation.

“You?” Lilith croons, sliding a hand from her stomach up her arm, curling her fingers against the curve of Zelda’s shoulder. “Not knowing your heart already be taken, hetja. Not knowing you had always loved the stars, the sky, the sea.”

“That’s an interesting interpretation,” Zelda says, wanting to protest, wanting to tell her that she does not fall in love. That she’d grown up knowing that all love did was hurt and harm and that she would rather die than be trapped in another gilded cage. Despite Faustus, despite family, she was not a creature designed to be loved, the world and seen to that.

But… Even if what Lilith was saying was true, even if she _had_ loved the idea of escaping to the sea, to the stars, to the ever-changing horizon more than she had built her walls, that was years ago and certainly not true now.

“Is it?” Lilith asks. Her face is so close to Zelda’s own that there is nowhere to look but in her eyes, blue and deep and writhing like the ocean. The longer Zelda looks, the more it feels like she’s gazing into the ocean during a storm, the sky at night, water churning violently beneath those delicate eyelashes, constellations spreading across the Milky Way, guiding sailors home. Even as a deep, yawning hunger and primal fear wells up inside of her, Zelda cannot bring herself to look away.

Lilith closes her eyes and Zelda does not gasp as she manages to tear herself away, but it is a close thing. Her heart is racing under her skin as she glances from the shore to the cottage on the beach to the spreading sky of the Milky Way over her. It takes a long moment before she’s willing to turn her gaze back to Lilith, the seconds ticking away as she musters the fortitude to lock eyes again.

She hadn’t needed to.

The god in front of her is smiling, lips stretched too wide and the corners of her closed eyes crinkled in delight, violent and joyful all at once.

“I thought so,” she says, gliding back, not a step, but a roll, water billowing the skirt of her dress and foam spreading through the sand around her. “Priestess,” she adds, and Zelda can’t quite tell if the dip of her head is mocking, or sincere.

Lilith lifts her chin and her spine seems to stretch, angling herself toward the midnight sky. She inhales but it is _wrong_ somehow, skin expanding just enough that Zelda feels a twinge of worry, the memory of how Lilith had grown and screamed and brought down an entire Coven at the forefront of her thoughts.

But Lilith does not destroy the cottage that Zelda’s found solace in.

She only disappears, leaving behind the smell of brine and rot and spiced rum, leaving Zelda barefoot in the sand, shivering in her robe.

-

In another life, Zelda Spellman would save people. 

In this life, she almost did. 


End file.
